China and the EU yesterday launched a joint project to boost China's clean development mechanism (CDM).

The EU will pour 2.8 million euros into the project, which targets EU-China joint climate change objectives, said Nicholas Costello, first counselor of the Delegation of the European Commission to China and Mongolia.

"It will facilitate the implementation of the CDM, make it easier to exchange information on CDM projects and encourage EU companies to engage in CDM projects in China and hence to tackle climate change on a global scale," Costello said.

The EU-China Facilitation Project, which will run until 2010, will support China's CDM through research, capacity development, technical exchange and training activities.

The CDM was set up under the Kyoto protocol to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to which China and the EU are parties.

CDM allows developed countries to achieve part of their emission reduction commitments by investing in emission-saving projects in developing countries and counting the reductions achieved toward their own commitments to control greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

China has approved more than 500 CDM projects. Over 70 percent of the projects focus on clean and renewable energy, 14 percent on raising energy efficiency and the rest focus on the elimination of HFC23, a heat-trapping gas 11,700 times stronger than carbon dioxide (CO2) in terms of greenhouse effect, said Yang Hongwei, director of CDM Project Management Center under the National Development and Reform Commission.

Source: China Daily